jmcdaid

A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands El Paso Party Balloon, The Chastened Panicans, and Dow 50,000. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu

This week at Pirate Cove: El Paso Party Balloon (Fri), The Chastened Panicans (Sat), and Dow 50,000 (Sun). And don't miss Residual Data in Backend Systems (in an unexpected return) and the final (?) appearance of Endangerment Finding. Three days of plasma, fiber, and animal spirits. Watch for NOTAMs

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 93. Proverb: "Never let the airplane get some place your brain hasn't been five minutes earlier." Exegesis: "Where by "airplane," we never almost never mean airplane. But when we do, we really, really do."

Proverb 93 reminds you to aviate, navigate, and then communicate.

By happy coincidence, they're on the schedule for this week's Pirate Cove Music Fest, headlining Friday. Saturday features The Chastened Panicans, and don't miss Residual Data in Backend Systems on Sunday afternoon.

FAA Closes Airspace at El Paso for ‘Special Security Reasons’ The US Federal Aviation Administration closed the airspace around the border city of El Paso, Texas, for 10 days, in an unusual move that authorities put down to unspecified “special security reasons....

here is our el paso airspace closure coverage and yes, we are as confused as you are (free link) www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 92. Proverb: "Brooklyn is the Canada of Manhattan" Exegesis: "Marshall McLuhan could only understand US media by coming from Canada; close enough to "get" the culture, but just far enough to provide perspective. Brooklyn peeks across a tidal strait and sees the city's true shape."

Proverb 92 rides the 2 train to Flatbush Avenue and back.

Thanks for your interest in McLuhan! Always happy to chat about this stuff.

If by "platform," we mean "electronic communication," that would arguably be McLuhan's take. Neil Postman's tweak is to also note how the platform sits in its ecology: there are theoretically many ways to "do" social media as a platform; each introduces specific distortions of the "pure" electronic

Great backgrounder on the absolutely bonkers logistics behind this amazing show.

In deep blue Massachusetts.

Opinion | Maybe It’s Time to Close the Kennedy Center for Good Washington isn’t a cultural hub, the building is ugly, and its leaders don’t much care about the arts.

Maybe it's time to close the Wall Street Journal for good.

New York isn't a conservative hub, the newspaper is ugly, and Rupert Murdoch doesn't care about democracy.

Bruh, do you see how stupid you sound?

I'm particularly fond of the condensed, proto-meme style of "War and Peace in the Global Village" and "The Medium is the Massage," in which he quotes A.N. Whitehead, "The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur." Both books are gold.

Hi! Always glad to hear folks reading McLuhan! From my perspective, the best way to read his work is as a series of probes, rather than as "truths." I think the form of the tetrad and working through it is more important than the particular "answer" that you get to. For me, it's about exploration.

A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands The Harding Memo, Desuetude, and The Euthanized Iguanas. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu

This week, the Pirate Cove Music Fest features headliners The Harding Memo (Fri), Desuetude (Sat), and The Euthanized Iguanas (Sun). Three days of bureaucracy, decay, anatomy, and aftermath—where standards evanesce but bodies remember. Free on the beach. Take only footprints, leave only memories.

Always happy to see our Sen. Ujifusa vote with principle and conviction. We were never going to win this one, but votes matter. Thank you, Senator.

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 91. Proverb: "When you get right down to it, we're really just blobs of protoplasm." Exegesis: "And instead of spending our brief time doing creative things, we devise reasons to hate blobs of protoplasm with slightly different cilia and make up arbitrary rules for who gets to wave their flagella with whom."

Proverb 91 winks at Leeuwenhoek.

Portion of the text of RI Director of Transportation Peter Alviti's resignation letter, with the phrase "improved the daily lives of Rhode Islanders" highlighted.

It was this line in Alviti's resignation that really pushed me over the edge. I stepped away from a teaching job in Providence because of the failure of RIDOT to maintain the Washington Bridge, so, nah, can't say you improved my life, sir.

Gotta admit, this *is* peak Rhode Island...

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 90. Proverb: "It's only a revolution if it's a read-write revolution." Exegesis: "If you’re not subverting the tools (Think: Banksy's shredder), rewriting the rules (winning loses), or reprogramming the human biocomputer (swim like a dolphin)-you’re just perpetuating business as usual.

Proverb 90 is an here to jam on a rhizome, not fill a rectangle on an org chart.

Review: THT REP'S SHARP, SHIMMERING MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM THT REP'S SHARP, SHIMMERING MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. The Hanover Theatre Repertory reimagines Shakespeare in an ‘80s nightclub — and delivers real magic

Latest review up at BroadwayWorld.

Rhode Island’s AI Education Plan: Beyond the Horseless Carriage When the first automobiles appeared, they were called “horseless carriages” and designed to look like the buggies they replaced. It took a…

Just posted on Medium, "Rhode Island’s AI Education Plan: Beyond the Horseless Carriage," an 800-word response to this week's AI Task Force report from a media theorist who uses, teaches with, and theorizes about LLMs. Includes a custom ChatGPT instance trained on the report and several of my papers

A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands Pink Coat Lady, The Underbussing, and Agentic Shift. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu

This week at Pirate Cove Music Fest: Pink Coat Lady (Fri), The Underbussing (Sat), and Agentic Shift (Sun). Three days of shock, awe, process, and anomie—identity blurs, rhizomes propagate, and the orangutan is not mentioned. Free. Aug 4–6. What year? Go ask Alice.

YouTube video by Lincoln Project Advocacy Absolute Immunity

Now THIS is how you do anti-ICE messaging:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNRC...

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 89. Proverb: "Camels evolved in the Arctic." Exegesis: "Those humps of fat -- and the enzymes to live off them without going into ketoacidosis -- evolved to survive frozen winters. Human perception was tuned to the threats of the savannah, which serves us poorly on social media. Evolution can't predict the future. Shrug."

Proverb 89 is a polar bear working a blast furnace.

Flock ALPRs for RI State Police denied in Portsmouth, 7-0. Thanks to the Council, who took citizen input seriously. I want to personally thank Larry Fitzmorris of Portsmouth Concerned Citizens, who spoke in opposition. We don't always see eye to eye, and I deeply appreciate his principled stance.

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 88. Proverb: "Fascism depends on threats and stochastic violence to frighten and subdue the population." Exegesis: "Not on our watch. We are Americans. We care for each other and we resist."

Proverb 88 mourns the dead and fights like hell for the living.

ICE murdered Renée Good in broad daylight. Less than 3 weeks later, they killed Alex Pretti, shooting him 10 times. Every day, we watch as people are ripped from their cars, their homes, their lives.

We can't allow ourselves to look away from this cruelty. Abolish ICE.

Anti-Flock ALPR testimony sent to the Portsmouth, RI Town Council Mr. President, members of the Council, thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is John McDaid, and I live on Gormley Avenue.

Sent my testimony on Flock license plate cameras to the Portsmouth Town Council in case things go sideways with the weather on Monday. Oh, yeah, cc'd local media and my state delegation. Full text on Medium.

A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands Board of Peace, Epistemic Aporia, and The Rubble of Empire. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu

This week at Pirate Cove: Board of Peace opens a weekend of procedural menace; Saturday, Epistemic Aporia questions who gets to know what; Sunday wraps with The Rubble of Empire's doomcore tales of institutional wreckage. Systems rise, systems fall, and somebody is always left sweeping the beach.

That’s a good approach. I was having a blood draw anyway for my yearly wellness visit, and my PCP thought it would be a useful data point.

Quote from Kirk Milohan, chair of ACIP: “I think also, as you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then. Our sanitation is different, our risk of disease is different, and so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not,” Milhoan said. “When … we talk about the risk of, let’s say, measles, many of those risks of not getting measles without having a vaccine was in the 1960s. We take care of children much differently now,” he added.

I just had to get my measles titer checked because of these knuckleheads. This is Kirk Milhoan, chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) which sets vax policy for Bobby Brainworm.
www.statnews.com/2026/01/22/v...